Applications open for BIFA Springboard Program: Producers (United Kingdom)

The programme offers training, mentoring and networking whilst building a cohort of filmmakers at a similar career level.

Running annually since 2020, this iteration is specifically for producers. BIFA Springboard: Producers will offer a mixture of technical and professional training, mentoring, networking and access to resources, so that the participants will be better equipped to deal with the huge variety of challenges they face on a daily basis.

The programme will run from May 2024 until January 2025 and will include a mixture of training sessions, panels, networking and one to one mentoring, with a combination of online and in person delivery. The programme is supported by the ScreenSkills Film Skills Fund with contributions from UK film productions, with additional support from The Wiggin Charitable Foundation via the Miles Ketley Award.

The programme is supported by the ScreenSkills Film Skills Fund with contributions from UK film productions, with additional support from The Wiggin Charitable Foundation via the Miles Ketley Award.

What it covers?

• The programme will offer mentoring over a 9 month period with a mentor specifically matched to your needs.
• There will also be networking sessions with your fellow cohort, financiers and funders, HODs and programme speakers and partners.
• Sessions will be a mixture of facilitated workshops/training and panels and will include the following topics:
  • financing, budgeting and scheduling
  • healthy and sustainable productions
  • funding – traditional, non-traditional, co-production and international financing
  • sales, distribution and marketing
  • dignity at work, recruiting and retaining a diverse workforce
  • building a slate, sustaining a career and leveraging your debut
  • legal: managing contracts, employees and freelancers
  • bullying intervention and prevention
  • building confidence and honing your creative voice, including through pitch practice
• The first welcome session will take place in May along with the first of the one-to-one mentoring sessions. Panels, training sessions and mentoring will continue monthly until January 2025.

Who it’s for?

• They will be focusing on fiction producers who have made (and released) a successful debut feature (festival and/or awards recognition, and/or formal distribution of some sort), and who are actively working on their second feature e.g. those in the early to experienced phase of their career. This is a particularly pivotal moment in a filmmaker’s career when they are often expected to work with bigger budgets, bigger crew, higher profile creatives and HODs, often dealing with public funders for the first time, or financiers who are looking for more creative control, all of which can be incredibly daunting especially when a producer may have made their first feature without any formal support or training and so may have gaps in their skills, knowledge or resources.
• BIFA believe that diversity in the film industry is paramount to its future success, and through their programmes they want to be supporting and developing talent who reflect the full diversity of the UK today. Whilst this programme is open to all producers who meet the criteria, they are especially keen to receive applications from producers that are from groups currently under-represented within the film industry, including people from under-represented ethnic backgrounds, D/deaf, disabled and/or neurodivergent people, women, non-binary people, LGBTQ+ people and people from lower socio-economic backgrounds, plus those based outside London.

For more information, visit BIFA.